With conventional printing presses, difficulties arise in printing items that have varying widths, such as envelopes. The varying widths of the items to be printed can result in poor quality and inconsistent printing across the items. A common practice for improving the quality of printing upon such items involves increasing the pressure on the printing blanket, to reduce the effects of the varying widths of the items to be printed. This technique, however, has a significant drawback in that the additional pressure on the printing blanket reduces the effective life of the printing blanket and also causes crushing of blankets.
Therefore, a need has arisen for a product which will allow quality printing of varying width items without exerting excess pressure on printing blankets.